


On the Horizon, Filled with Light

by addictedtostorytelling



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5242664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addictedtostorytelling/pseuds/addictedtostorytelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot fic written in response to this prompt: "Sara got the flu and lost her voice. Grissom obviously takes care of her and fusses over her, but they have to communicate with each other using sign language, seeing as Sara can’t speak." Prompt from the wonderful Orlaith at keepmeiny0urskin on tumblr. Set during Season Ten. Canon-compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Horizon, Filled with Light

**Author's Note:**

> **To Orlaith.**

**On the Horizon, Filled with Light**

For the seven years he was her supervisor, Grissom never once had to grant Sara a sick day, not because she never got sick—she did, occasionally—but because she never allowed herself to miss work no matter how awful she felt.

He has seen her process crime scenes while congested, headachy, and running one-hundred degree fevers. Even when other members of the team would take off from work, abused of the same illnesses she had, she would still stubbornly show up for her shifts, popping cough drops and drinking more tea than was probably advisable, swearing up and down that she was fine, just fine, completely well and able to function.

Now that they’re married, Grissom knows even more about Sara’s stubborn refusal to take a day off, even when she needs it: He’s watched her peel herself up from bed, suffering through horrible menstrual cramps, to go dig through dump sites and fish bodies out of freezing rivers; he knows that when she has the flu and feels exhausted and in pain, she’ll still jump up to her alarm and start readying for a call-out. Even on bad mental health days, when something has set her spiraling back into jagged memories, she still insists on going to work, as if some force compels her.

So to say that it surprises Grissom when Sara comes home from the lab five hours early and sick would be an understatement.

He hears the door open, and then he hears coughing. Startled, he sits up off the couch, and Hank perks up near his feet. “Sara?” he calls, setting aside the book he had been reading—Mallarmé—and rising to see what has her back to him so much sooner than expected.

They’re living two lives nowadays: one in Paris, where he teaches at the Sorbonne; one in Vegas, where she’s moonlighting at the lab, working under Catherine. Usually, he stays in Europe, and she comes to visit him when she can, but since his semester just ended yesterday, and the new one won’t begin for another two weeks, he has flown back to Vegas so that he can spend time with her in the interim. His flight got in at 11:15 pm—just after the start of her shift—so he took a taxi to their house and has been waiting for her there for the last three hours. It is now just after two in the morning; she wasn’t supposed to get off shift until 7 am. He hasn’t seen her yet since arriving back in the States.

He finds her in the living room, sitting on the ottoman to their lounge chair, one shoe off, the other one unlaced, her elbows resting on her knees, and her head cradled in her hands. At first, he thinks she looks sad, and he wonders if something has happened—some accident at the lab or in the field, something that would result in an abrupt end to shift—but then she starts coughing again, and it’s deep from inside her lungs.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, and she looks up at him, “are you okay?”

She appears, in a word, unwell.

Her face is pale, and her features are drawn, her eyes tired even though she would usually be wide awake at this hour. When she sees him, she reflexively smiles, and it seems to take a great deal of energy for her to do so. She starts to say something, but her voice comes out as a rasp and nothing more. She tries to clear her throat, but it starts her into another coughing fit.

“Should I get you some water?” Grissom asks, concerned.

She shakes her head, still coughing, her hand covering her mouth, and gestures to him to stay put. After a few more coughs, she regains her composure and clears her throat again. All she can manage is a hoarse, barely there: “I’m fine now that you’re here.”

Those words are even more of an untruth than usual from her.

“You’re sick,” Grissom says, crouching down in front of her so that they can be level. He reaches out to feel her forehead with his hand. “You’re burning up.”

Sara rolls her eyes. “Catherine said if I didn’t go home, she’d fire me,” she says—and her voice almost disappears before she reaches the end of the sentence.

If she weren’t so sick, Grissom would tease her to say that he was glad that Catherine had found a way to compel her home when he could have never done the same back when he was her supervisor. As things are, he takes pity and leans forward to kiss her forehead.

“I’m glad you’re home,” he says.

“I’m glad you’re home, too,” she whispers. Then. “You probably shouldn’t kiss me, though. Or breathe my air.”

He nods but doesn’t move.

• • •

Grissom goes to make Sara tea and returns ten minutes later to find her still in the process of doffing her shoes, moving in that telltale sluggish way that belongs to fevered illness. Her lungs already sound ragged from coughing.

“How long have you had this?” he says, handing her the mug and then stooping—while she has her hands distracted—to finish the job of taking her shoes from her before she can protest.

She gulps down the tea, wincing at the heat. “Just a coup—,” she starts to say, but her voice comes out so threadbare and pathetic that Grissom stops her with a shake of his head. She scoffs, annoyed at her inability to speak, then holds up her free hand: three fingers.

Come to think about it, her voice did sound a little scratchy the last few times Grissom talked to her over the phone. He had just assumed she was tired. “You’ve been sick for that long and still going to work?” he says, impressed by her stubbornness, as ever.

She takes another drink of tea and nods.

He carries her shoes over to the mat by the door and sets them down by her kit before returning to her. “Let me take care of you,” he implores her, offering her his hand to help her up from the ottoman. “No more work until you’re better.”

If she weren’t so tired, she would probably fight him, but, as it is, she allows him to pull her into an embrace. She still awkwardly holds her mug in her free hand but nestles her face against his chest and allows him to kiss her hair, holding her to him. When she breathes, he can feel the rattle through her chest. Her body seethes with heat.

“How about a hot shower?” Grissom offers, and, after a second, she nods, compliant. “Good girl,” he says, kissing her hair again.

• • •

While Sara is in the shower, Grissom googles “laryngitis,” reads up on possible treatments, and then checks his email: two new messages.

The first is from Catherine and comes with no subject and only a single line of body text:

_Your wife is a biohazard. Keep her out of my lab. Merci.—CW_

The second is from his mother, asking for a family Skype visit now that he’s back in the States for a while.

Both messages get him thinking, and the second one, especially.

When he hears the shower shut off, he goes from the den to the bedroom and finds Sara toweling herself dry, still moving in that slow-to-the-bones way. She starts to talk, and her voice does come out somewhat better from the steam. “I’m feeling a lot better,” she says, still froggy but at least with some sound behind her words. “I’ll probably be able to go in tomorrow night. I should text Cath—”

Grissom shakes his head again. “You shouldn’t talk,” he says. “Save your voice.”

“But I feel better,” she argues.

He comes right up behind her, pressing his clothed body against her naked one, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Steam helps loosen mucosal secretions in your chest and throat,” he says, “causing a temporary cessation to your symptoms. But give your membranes an hour or two, and you’ll be back to feeling congested.”

“You’re so romantic,” Sara says wryly—and, right on cue, her voice comes out in a squeak.

“See?” Grissom tells her, guiding her to sit down on her towel on the bed while he goes to fetch her pajamas.

• • •

They end up watching an old movie with Clark Gable in it, and by the time they make it fifteen minutes in, Sara is coughing her lungs out again. Hank whines at the foot of the bed, worried about her, and Grissom digs through the medicine cabinet for cough suppressant but can’t find any. He returns from the bathroom with nothing but Tylenol.

“Let’s just go to bed,” Sara says between coughing bouts—though maybe “says” is not the right word, considering that her voice has almost vanished. She must be feeling bad because she accepts the pills that Grissom offers her without objection. “I hope I don’t keep you up.”

“It’s okay,” Grissom tells her. “I slept on the plane.”

• • •

An hour passes before Sara manages to stop coughing long enough to fall asleep, and she is only able to sleep for the few hours until sunrise before she then coughs herself awake. She still feels very warm to the touch, and now her voice is completely gone—inaudible above a whisper. She tries to say something to Grissom upon waking, but the words just come out as dry gasping.

Grissom thinks of his mother’s email again.

 _Sign it,_ he tells her, switching into his second language.

Sara stares at him like he's crazy.

Ever since they first got engaged—before Sara left Vegas, before Grissom followed her to Costa Rica, before they moved to Paris, before Sara moved back to the States—Grissom has been teaching Sara ASL. It was something she asked him to share with her and which he was pleased to do.

At first, the goal was to get her conversant before the wedding so that she could talk with his mother, but progress was slow-going, particularly with all the interruptions for departures and arrivals and the long stretches spent apart, occupying separate hemispheres. It wasn’t until they were newlyweds living in their apartment along the River Seine that she started to actually pick up the language.

Nowadays, she still isn’t entirely fluent, but she is able to both understand others and express herself well enough that she only needs minimal interpretation from Grissom when they talk with his mother and her friends.

Grissom is very proud of her advancement, but she is more self-conscious, not liking to do something unless she can do it perfectly. She is impatient with herself and the slowness with which signs come to her. Having quicker thoughts than she does fingers sometimes discourages her from practicing.

“Are you kidding?” she mouths to him.

 _Why not?_ he signs, shrugging.

 _Because—I’m—slow—at—it,_ she signs back.

“Well, you can’t talk,” he reminds her. “Besides: It’ll be good practice.”

She finger-spells _T-Y-L-E-N-O-L_ and flops back onto the bed.

• • •

She isn’t an easy sell on the signing and keeps trying to speak, despite the fact that her throat is raw, and she can’t manage to make any voiced sound. She also refuses to stay in bed and let Grissom care for her. He keeps catching her in the kitchen, trying to unload the dishwasher, and he has to all but shoo her away when the buzzer on the dryer sounds, lest she attempt to fold the laundry.

He calls to make her an appointment with her doctor, but can’t manage to get her in for another two days, unless he takes her to Urgent Care.

 _No U-R-G-E-N-T care,_ she signs. _I’m fine._

 _Then why no kissing you?_ he signs back. _You are worried you are contagious._

 _Not that bad,_ she argues.

He ducks forward and kisses her, more on the cheek than on the mouth—but she still flinches away and pulls a face.

 _If you—get sick,_ she signs, _they—will not—let you—on a plane._

 _Then I can stay with you,_ he signs, giving her another kiss on the cheek.

This time, he feels her smile against his lips, and her ribs quake with laughter, not coughing.

• • •

Grissom actually very much likes being a househusband, and especially when Sara finally consents to his care. She is tired, not just from lack of sleep but from her body fighting infection and putting up with such a rigorous cough. He runs to the pharmacy to pick her up some medicine, and, when he returns, he finds her napping on the couch with Hank, the TV on at a low volume, his Mallarmé book open on the coffee table beside her. He covers her with an afghan and sets the medicine and a cup of water to take it with on the coffee table beside the book. It pleases him when he touches the back of his hand to Sara's brow and finds that her fever seems to be breaking.

When she wakes three hours later, he has a modified version of his mother’s soup ready for her lunch—tofu rather than chicken.

 _So sweet,_ she signs to him, bleary and still paler than she should be.

_I’m going to email Catherine to say you will be home tonight. Okay?_

_Okay._

• • •

They finish first the Times crossword puzzle and then the Clark Gable movie. Sara’s coughing isn’t as terrible during the afternoon and early evening hours as it is at night and in the morning, but she still moves slowly and admits that she feels sore, both in her chest from the coughing and in her muscles from the sickness.

After they turn off Clark Gable, the house is incredibly quiet—just the two of them signing to each other, and Hank dozing in his dog bed on the floor. Though Grissom certainly wants Sara not to be sick, he is glad that he gets this time with her alone: no work, no outside world, just hours upon hours upon hours.

He runs his fingers through her hair and then moves to massaging her back, working the aches out of it. He tells her in his quietest, most intimate language that he is sorry that she hurts and that he knows she doesn’t like needing help but that he is glad that she will let him help her and that her trust is something he treasures and carries with him, even when he is away.

She lets him kiss her then, not mouth-to-mouth but at her neck and over her collarbones, and signs the first sign he ever taught to her: _I love you, I love you, I love you always._

Soon, she falls asleep in his arms, and he holds her until he falls asleep, too.

• • •

The sickness takes its course for another five days, the cough worsening over time. Sara's fever never returns, but other symptoms crop up in its place, the most persistent among them nausea from so much coughing and a wheeze that plagues her even when she's sleeping. Grissom Skypes his mother, who tells him to get a humidifier. He does, and it helps, but Sara is still miserable.

 _I hope you do not get this,_ Sara tells him.  _I am not as good at taking care of anyone as you are._

They've continued with their signing, keeping up the quiet in the house, except for her coughing and occasional noise from the TV.  By now, they're both accustomed to the shift, so much so that even when Sara's voice finally starts to come back, they still converse in ASL. Though Sara won't believe Grissom, he thinks she's gotten faster, even just in these few days, from all the practice.

 _I think I understand you better now,_ she tells him one day as he administers her some medicine.  _Growing up in a house, so quiet like this. Did you have to take care of your mother when she got sick?_

 _Sometimes,_ he tells her.

 _I used to get sick always when I was young,_ she says, after a minute.  _F-O-S-T-E-R children pass many germs around._

 _So do C.S.I.s,_ he says, joking. But then more serious.  _That helps me understand you better, too._

• • •

On day six, they're able to sleep in, Sara's coughing subsided enough that it doesn't wake them. Sara seems to have more energy, and her nausea and wheezing are all but gone. She takes some of the last of her medicine and tells Grissom she can't wait for them to be able to go out and do something. By the afternoon, it is clear that she has turned a corner—so much so that Grissom doesn't even feel bad, letting her help him fold the laundry.

 _I should call Catherine,_ Sara says.  _Tell her I'm coming in tomorrow._

 _How is your voice?_ Grissom asks her.

"It's, uh—," she says, testing it. "It's actually doing better."

She looks strangely surprised at herself, almost like she had forgotten that she would ever recuperate. A conflicted expression passes over her face.

"What?" Grissom asks her.

She shrugs. "It was just kind of nice, signing."

"Well, we don't have to stop."

"No."

Then.  _Thank you for taking care of me._

_Of course. Thank you for taking some sick days. Finally._

Sara laughs, a full sound from the back of her throat, and this time it's her that kisses him: the full mark that she is better. Her lips land just below his mouth, and she smiles against his skin.

 _I had them coming_ , she says.

And now a real kiss, light but long-awaited, as if some force compels her.


End file.
